A listener named Matt asks Father Dave about an upcoming Marian solemnity. He says, “Why is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception moved from December 8 to December 9 [this year]?”
Father Dave begins, “The Feast of the Immaculate Conception, as [Catholics] may know, is a holy day of obligation…It is such an important feast day for Catholics that, like a few other [feast days], we are to come to church even if it’s not a Sunday.”
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“We have the issue around once every seven years – what about when one of these feasts does, in fact, happen on a Sunday?” Father Dave continues, noting that there are roughly six holy days of obligation each year in the United States and Canada. “For many of those six, if they were to occur naturally on a Saturday or a Monday, the obligation is removed because we’re going to be at church adjacent to or maybe even on that same day, if it’s a Saturday. For others, if it’s a Saturday or Monday, it doesn’t matter; we still have to go to church twice. So for instance, if December 8 naturally fell on a Saturday or a Monday, it would still be a holy day of obligation two days in a row.”
“What if it falls on a Sunday? In most cases, at different times of the year, that just means the feast replaces the Sunday. So, for instance, Christmas recently fell on a Sunday, but we don’t move Christmas to a different day; We don’t have it on the 26th or the 24th.” For the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Father Dave says, “Because this feast would always happen in Advent, we have a little bit of a conundrum, because the Sundays of seasons such as Lent in Advent can’t be replaced by anything other than a Solemnity of the Lord…even Mary, our Blessed Mother, as honored and revered as she is, is not God.”
He continues, “Therefore, on December 8, the Immaculate Conception would not take precedence over the Second Sunday of Advent. With any other kind of feast day, let’s say it’s this feast of St. Anthony or St. Theresa, usually if it falls on a Sunday, particularly a Sunday during a season like Advent or Lent, it just evaporates, and we don’t celebrate it that year. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception is so important that we never do that. We never say, ‘Oh well, I guess we’ll skip it this year.’”
Father Dave says, “The Church doesn’t want to say that the Second Sunday of Advent or the Immaculate Conception is more important than the other; they’re both very important and should be celebrated. So in this case, for this year, we transpose, or move, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception from Sunday, December 8, which will remain second Sunday of Advent, and we celebrate it a day later on this Monday, December 9, which will be this year, a holy day of obligation.”
